Experiences
Experiences
The Towel & Tram Story
As soon as we got to our accomodations, we realized there weren't any towels provided so we needed to go to a store to buy some. There is no Walmart or Target that we could easily go to and buy towels. Barcelona has supermarkets, which look like dollar stores back home, on every corner. We searched in several supermarkets and not one market sold towels. At this point, we were going to settle for dish rags because we literally could not find one towel. We decided to go in one more supermarket and there ya have it, towels!!! However, these were not regular bath towels. They were more like beach towels with Spiderman, Mickey Mouse, and LOL characters on them...but you get what you get and you don't throw a fit. We decided this would do for just one night and the next day we could look up a store that sold towels. The next day (first day of school), we found a shop that sold towels, but we had to ride the metro to get there because it was pretty far. We enter the metro station, and of course everything is in Spanish, so we first had to figure out how to purchase a ticket. We get our tickets, then we had to figure out which stop to get off at. Google Maps told us we needed to get off on the very last stop, so we did, but that was wrong. We looked it up again and we actually needed to get off on the second stop from our original point...that was an adventure in itself. Finally, we get off at the right stop and walk to the store that sold towels. This type of store was very interesting. It had all kinds of random things that you might need around the house. There was a great selection of towels to choose from, which was all that mattered. We also found a delicious pasta place and cute little shops all around. Turned out to be a really great night! The very next day (second day of school) we found an American restaurant two doors down from our dorm, which was really neat and had very good food. As we walked out of the restaurant, we noticed a supermarket right next door that we had never seen before. We go inside to look around and what do you know, bath towels of all kinds!!! We couldn't stop laughing. Turns out, we could have easily walked three doors down from our dorm to find perfectly good bath towels. Instead, we took a 1 hour metro ride to find towels! We don't regret it one bit because we got to experience other parts of Barcelona that we might not have seen before. But it is a really funny story!
Nice, France Shuts Down Because of...RAIN.
For our first weekend in Spain, we decided to go to Nice, France. We arrived in Nice and it was raining...hard. This went on all day long. Our shoes were soaked and it was freezing, but we still made the best of it! We got to see some beautiful attractions, shop in some really cool shops, and eat a yummy dessert called a waffle bubble cone. About 6:00 that night, we went up to our air bnb to dry off and get ready for dinner. We come back down and everything is dark; all the restaurants and shops had closed. We asked someone why this happened and they said it was because there was flooding and the rain was not going to stop. We were not that happy with this because we were very hungry and had no access to food. We went back to the air bnb to try and look up "fast food" type restaurants. We found a Dominoe's (lol) that was open and could deliver to us. We waited for two hours for the pizza to show up, but it never came. We tried calling them hoping someone that picked up would know some english, but no luck. We ended the night eating the complimentary snacks provided by the air bnb (this was cookies and crackers) and playing cards. The four of us truly made the best of the night. We couldn't stop laughing! This night will probably be one of my favorite nights.
The Milan Metro is Not Open 24/7
We arrived very late in Milan, Italy around 1 am. We planned everything beforehand of how we would get to our air bnb. The plan was to ride the bus from the aiport to a central location, take the metro to the hotel where our key was, take the metro close to our air bnb, and then walk a little to get there. The bus successfully gets us to the central location, but the metro was closed... We planned this to be our only way of getting to the air bnb. Of course it wasn't going to be that easy!! We ending up walking several miles to get the key and then to get to our air bnb, but we found it a little after 2 am! :)
The Power Goes Out
The day we wanted to visit the most beautiful attractions in Barcelona (Park Guell and La Sagrada Familia) and get the prettiest pictures, the power goes out while getting ready. I wake up Sunday morning with total bedhead thinking I can't wait to put a straightener to this mess and as soon as I finish brushing my teeth and plug in my straightener, the room goes dark. I walk into the hallway to find the other girls and learn that their rooms had no power either. None of us had done our hair yet, so we had to make do with what our hair was and just go with it. What a great start to our day!!!